Integration: Lighting Volumes

Sunlight and Skylight 

One of the most insightful integration tips I learned at work recently is that emphasizing sunlight as a key and skylight as a fill through color can help better integrate a volume into a scene. And after looking at natural examples in photographs, it started to make more sense, especially when exaggerated at sunrise and sunset.

To show the importance of keeping sunlight and skylight separate, I edited the pyroclastic volume’s fill side below to be the same color as the sunlit side. Not only does it feel off color-wise, but taking out the blue shadows breaks the connection to the blue shadows on the volcano itself.

Looking at the original image, we get a clearer sense of the smoke’s form and light sources now that the smoke’s skylight fill matches the volcano’s skylight fill.